


Faultline (You Shook Me Apart)

by Saucery



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bigotry & Prejudice, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cognitive Dissonance, Coulson Lives, Culture Shock, D/s, Drama, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Freedom, Friends to Enemies, Friendship, From Sex to Love, Gender Issues, Government Agencies, Implied Theoretical Mpreg, Knotting, Loneliness, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Memory Loss, No actual mpreg, Omega Verse, Pseudoscience, Repressed Memories, Romance, Rough Sex, SHIELD, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem Issues, Social Commentary, Social Justice, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:02:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1504571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is an Omega and Bucky is his Alpha, but the course of true love never did run smooth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faultline (You Shook Me Apart)

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an Omegaverse in which the Avengers live in New York City and regularly meet on SHIELD’s main surviving Helicarrier.
> 
> In this universe, Alphas and Omegas can only bond with each other, and Betas can only bond with other Betas. (Casual sex is possible between all types, but life-bonds are only formed as per these rules.) Alpha males and females can impregnate, but can’t be impregnated; Omega males and females can be impregnated, but can’t impregnate. Among Betas, only men can impregnate and only women can be impregnated. Essentially, this is a multi-gendered world.
> 
> The primary cast is as follows.
> 
>  **Alphas:** Nick Fury, Pepper Potts, Thor, Phil Coulson, Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanoff and Peggy Carter.
 **Betas:** Sam Wilson, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Maria Hill, Bruce Banner and Sharon Carter.
 **Omegas:** Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Clint Barton and Loki.

> 
> This story begins just prior to the events of _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ , and incorporates elements from that movie as the plot progresses. Be warned; there are spoilers.

* * *

 

Steve hasn’t been inconvenienced by his Omega status since Dr. Erskine remade him in the image of a perfect soldier. Perfect soldiers don’t go into uncontrollable heats; they have to be combat-ready at all times. They can’t afford to be reduced to helpless, writhing messes for days on end, entirely incapable of independent thought or action until an Alpha knots them and cools their fever. They can’t be effective operatives if they’re predisposed to docility and obedience in the presence of enemy Alphas. And they certainly can’t be out of commission for the duration of a pregnancy. The mere idea of an Omega in the military is ridiculous—or _was_ ridiculous, back in the 1940s.

Steve’s still wrapping his head around how dramatically American culture has changed, since then, and how many Omegas are now actively participating in national defense. Two of Steve’s fellow Avengers are Omegas—Tony Stark and Clint Barton—and the fact that they’re Omegas is public knowledge. The press doesn’t harass them about it, or even mention it, except for the odd gossip columnist waxing lyrical about how Hawkeye has recently been “glowing” with the radiance of an Omega freshly claimed, and speculating on whether the Alpha responsible for that glow is an Avenger. (It’s not. Agent Coulson isn’t technically an Avenger, although the team considers him an honorary Avenger, nonetheless.) Tony’s so ridiculously, obviously happy with his Alpha, Pepper Potts, that nobody comments on them; they’re practically boring in their domestic bliss, and unless Tony reverts to his once-promiscuous ways (unlikely) or falls pregnant (far more likely), the media probably won’t bother with him.

It galls, occasionally, but it’s unfair and petty to be envious of another’s joy, so Steve doesn’t let himself indulge in bouts of self-pity. He doesn’t want an Alpha. He’s reconciled himself to his life the way it is, being useful to his country, accepting mission after mission, teamwork and camaraderie and friendship replacing his need for a deeper bond, for a mate. The serum does the rest, suppressing his heats and making it unnecessary for him to scratch that particular itch. He’s celibate—has been for as long as he can remember—and he doesn’t see a problem with that, even though Tasha keeps trying to set him up. He doesn’t _want_ to be set up. He’d rather spend an evening watching Star Wars movies with Sam—who’s an unmated Beta and thus is free to socialize—or spar with Thor, or allow Tasha to tutor him in the finer points of explosives and vodka (not, thankfully, at the same time), or listen to Bruce and Tony talking shop in the Helicarrier’s lab, gushing about a revolutionary biomolecule as they bow identically sleep-mussed heads over a microscope.

It’s home. It’s enough of a home. And if Steve returns to his empty apartment and finds it difficult to fall asleep with nothing but the ticking of the clock to keep him company, it’s just an irrelevant, impractical sentiment that he’ll be better off ignoring. So he ignores it.

His tranquility falters when he visits Peggy, because she always tells him to go out there and meet someone, always says she’s too old for that dance she’d promised him. She’s been married and has children and grandchildren, and the gentleness of her paper-thin hand atop his as she talks about them makes Steve _hurt_ , not because he’s jealous of the past he didn’t get to share with her, but because she’s clearly mentioning them in an effort to convince Steve to build a family of his own. When he tells her that the Avengers are his family, she smiles and pats his arm and says, “Of course.” That hurts most of all. She’s never pitied him—her inability to pity anyone is among the countless things he loves about her—but her compassion grates. There are only two Alphas he’s ever been drawn to, ever considered bonding with, and she’s one of them. The other is dead, lost to him on a winter’s day seventy years ago, before Steve got to tell him how he felt. Not that they’d have been able to marry, anyway, as same-sex bonds were illegal both in and out of the armed services.

They’re not illegal anymore. But Bucky isn’t here, in a present where they _can_ be together. Ironic, isn’t it?

Maybe what Peggy says is true, and there’s an Alpha out there somewhere who’ll do for Steve what Dr. Erskine had said a truly compatible Alpha would do for him—induce a heat that would finally break the serum’s iron grip over his hormones. Steve had begun responding to both Bucky and Peggy, upon turning twenty-one, but it had been manageable, not a full heat, since he’d only just had the serum. It may not be as mild as that, now that Steve’s in his late twenties. Erskine had warned Steve that his heat would only become more severe with age, the longer it’s suppressed, because the more his reproductive system is denied what it craves, the more desperately it will react to a potential mate. It might well be unstoppable. Given that unnerving prophecy, and given how difficult and humiliating heats appear to be, Steve’s quite okay with _not_ having an Alpha, thanks very much. Sure, there’s this “Omega Positivity” campaign going around the nation’s major cities, crowding the billboards and portraying Omega heats as wonderful opportunities to be incredibly, intensely intimate with a caring Alpha, but that intensity seems frightening to Steve.

While the general public will no doubt be stunned at the concept of Captain America being frightened by something, it is, nevertheless, a simple truth. Steve is frightened of mating. He’s frightened of losing his hard-won control over a body that had refused to cooperate with him until science changed it irrevocably. That was half of the reason the army had rejected Steve, to begin with—not only had he been a scrawny weakling with debilitating health issues, but the strength of his will had also been in doubt. Who’d heard of an Omega in charge of anything, or accomplishing anything of worth? Even if Steve had, by some miracle, gotten into the army as an all-natural, un-engineered Omega, he wouldn’t have made Captain. Omegas couldn’t be trusted with that responsibility, because they couldn’t be trusted with themselves. They were slaves to their heats. Pathetic, simpering—

No. Those were the prejudices of a vanished era. Only conservatives on the fringes of the far right continue to hold onto those beliefs. The bulk of society has moved on. Omegas can and often do occupy positions of power. An Omega’s pregnancy does not result in workplace discrimination or the hiring or promotion of non-Omegas in preference to Omegas. Nowadays, an Omega’s heat cycle is taken in stride, with pre-sanctioned paid leave taking effect during its peak, both for the Omega and the Omega’s bonded Alpha. The laws of the land have been changed drastically, and the revised constitutional protections awarded to Omegas have evened out the playing field, if not completely, then considerably. None of Steve’s antiquated resentments belong here. Steve has to stop thinking like a doddering fogey, like a washed-up relic cast upon the shores of an impossibly glittering future.

Steve had never been a model Omega, in any case, rebellious and given more to confrontation than submission. That doesn’t get him reprimanded in this brave new world, doesn’t earn him the disapproving glares of people who don’t understand why he won’t just submit to a decent Alpha and get knotted, already. “Submission” isn’t even how it’s referred to, these days. Alphas and Omegas are supposed to be equal partners, pair-bonded in a marriage of mutual respect. When Peggy urges him to look for a mate, that’s the sort of relationship she’s hinting at, not—

Not—

It doesn’t matter. Steve may be (undeservedly) idolized in modern America, but he recalls being a bony little runt, pushed around by stupid, cocksure Alphas determined to put him in his place. The angry itch he’d felt under his skin at that moment still haunts him, still buzzes along his nerves, and maybe it’s a kind of psychological conditioning that Steve can’t rid himself of, but there it is.

Steve hasn’t been inconvenienced by his Omega status since Dr. Erskine remade him, but he hasn’t made peace with it, either.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)!


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